Interaction of Fiscal and Monetary Policies

Annual Research Conference of the National Bank of Ukraine organized in cooperation with Narodowy Bank Polski

Kyiv, 31 May – 1 June 2018

About Conference

For the third time the National Bank of Ukraine together with Narodowy Bank Polski are holding the annual research conference supported by the Canada-IMF Technical Assistance Project NBU Institutional Capacity Building and the Kyiv School of Economics.

Experts from central banks of the USA, Canada, Sweden, Poland, the International Monetary Fund, researchers from leading world universities (the University of California, Berkeley, Duke University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Taxes at Austin) and other research institutions and expert centers will present their research findings related to the interaction of fiscal and monetary policies and discuss in panel sessions present day challenges encountered by central banks.

The highlight of the conference will be the lecture by Professor Alan Auerbach from University of California, Berkeley.

During the two-day conference the participants will have a unique opportunity to communicate in person with prominent researchers and experts, discuss pressing issues of the fiscal and monetary policies’ interactions and their impact on achieving macroeconomic goals such as stable inflation, fiscal sustainability, financial stability, and economic growth.

Speakers

Alan J. Auerbach

University of California, Berkeley

Alan J. Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously taught at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as Economics Department Chair. Professor Auerbach was Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992 and has been a consultant to several government agencies and institutions in the United States and abroad. He served as an Executive Committee Member and Vice President of the American Economic Association, as Editor of that association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and as President of the National Tax Association, from which he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal in 2011. Professor Auerbach is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Bill Dupor

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

William Dupor is an assistant vice president and economist in the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Before joining the Bank in 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. His background includes 10 years as an associate professor of economics at Ohio State University and 6 years as an assistant professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He was also a national fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the Bank of Portugal, Lisbon.

Bill received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1997 and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1992. His research interests include fiscal policy, monetary economics, macroeconomics, and dynamic economics.

In addition to his responsibilities at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, he has published articles in a number of economics journals, including the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy, among others.

Tymofiy Mylovanov

Kyiv School of Economics

Tymofiy Mylovanov is the Honorary President of Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). He received his Master degree in Economics from the Kyiv School of Economics in 1999. Tymofiy Mylovanov earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2004 and has taught at the University of Bonn, Penn State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh afterwards. His research on game theory, contract theory, and institutional design has been published in major international academic journals. Tymofiy Mylovanov is a co-founder of VoxUkraine and has been a member of the academic advisory board of the KSE for several years. Since October 2016 – Deputy Chairman of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Cecilia Skingsley

Sveriges Riksbank

Cecilia Skingsley took up the post of Deputy Governor of the Swedish Riksbank in May 2013 with a term of office of six years. She represents the Riksbank on the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS) and on the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB). She is also the Governor of the Riksbank’s alternative on the Board of Directors of the BIS and chairs the retail payments council in Sweden. In October 2016, Ms Skingsley was appointed to co-chair the World Economic Forum’s working group Global Future Council on the Future of Financial and Monetary Systems. Ms Skingsley has a BSc in economics and a financial analyst diploma (CEFA). She was previously chief economist at Swedbank and has also worked at the financial daily Dagens Industri, ABN Amro Bank and the Ministry of Finance.

Dmitriy Sergeyev

Bocconi University

Dmitriy Sergeyev is an Assistant Professor at Bocconi University (Milan), a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (London). He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in 2013, M.S. degree in Applied Math and Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and an M.A. degree in Economics from New Economic School. His research interests lie in the areas of International Finance and Macroeconomics with a particular focus on monetary, fiscal, and macroprudential policies interactions. His most recent publications are “Growth-Rate and Uncertainty Shocks in Consumption: Cross-Country Evidence” (joint with Emi Nakamura and Jon Steinsson) and “Government Spending Multipliers under Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from Japan” (joint with Wataru Miyamoto and Thuy Lan Nguyen) appeared in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics.

Francesco Bianchi

Duke University

Francesco Bianchi is an Associate Professor of Economics at Duke University. He is a member of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics, the European Economic Review, and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. Professor Bianchi received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2009. He has held visiting positions at UCLA, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University. In 2015 he was awarded the Wim Duisenberg Research fellowship and in 2010 he received the Zellner Thesis Award in Business and Economic Statistics, an award assigned every year by the Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association to the best Ph.D. thesis dealing with an applied problem in Business and Economic Statistics. He has published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economic Dynamics, the International Economic Review, and the NBER Macroeconomics Annual. Currently, Bianchi’s main research interests involve the role of agents’ beliefs about future policy makers’ behavior in explaining macroeconomic dynamics, the interaction between the macroeconomy and asset markets, and the link between long-term growth and business cycle fluctuations.

Iourii Manovskii

University of Pennsylvania

Iourii Manovskii is a Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Executive Director of Philadelphia Federal Statistical Research Data Center. He is an expert on empirical macro and labor economics and has published numerous articles in top economics journals. His recent research combines economic theory, advanced computational and machine learning techniques, as well as large non-public administrative data sets, often on the entire population, of e.g., Denmark, Norway, and Germany, to study the sorting of workers across firms and occupations based on their unobserved to researcher characteristics. He also made major contributions to the analysis of the dynamics of the U.S. labor market and job vacancies over the business cycle, the interaction of monetary and fiscal policies, and assessing the consequences of government stabilization policies, such as unemployment benefit extensions or fiscal stimulus in recessions. Professor Manovskii serves on editorial boards of several leading economics journals, as a member of the National Executive Committee of the U.S. FSRDC Program, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Penn's Population Studies Center, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Fellow at Penn’s Institute of Urban Research, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Oslo, and a co-Investigator on MacCaLM project at the University of Edinburgh.

Jerzy Osiatyński

Narodowy Bank Polski

Jerzy Osiatyński Member of the Monetary Policy Council Born in Riga on 2 November 1941. Graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics (at that time: Main School of Planning and Statistics) in 1964, and in 1989 received the title of Professor of Economic Sciences. Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2007-2013) and member of the Committee on Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2007-2011); member of NBP Economic Research Committee (since 2009); from January to April 2010, member of the National Development Council of the President of the Republic of Poland and from October 2010 to December 2013, social adviser to the President of the Republic of Poland. Since 2001, Professor at the Bielsko-Biała School of Finances and Law. He is author of academic textbooks and scientific dissertations in the field of economic theory, public finance, history of economic thought of the 20th century and economic transformation from centrally planned to market economy. Minister – director of the Central Planning Office (1989-1991); minister of finance (1992-1993). In 1995-2008, consultant of the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme and other international and non-government organisations in the area of economic transformation, notably in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Since 2001, member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Socio-Economic Strategy and its vice-chairman in 2004-2006. Member of Parliament of the tenth, first, second and third term. He was member of parlia-mentary commissions and sub-committees dealing with public finance, European integra-tion, public control, audit and economic policy. In 1990 he was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa of New York University. In 1993 - elected the best minister of finance in Central and Eastern European countries. On 20 December 2013 appointed as a Member of the Monetary Policy Council.

Jesper Lindé

Sveriges Riksbank

Jesper Lindé defended his PhD-thesis in empirical macroeconomics at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1999. Between 1999-2008 Lindé worked at Sveriges Riksbank, first as research economist and then as head of the modelling unit at the monetary policy department. In 2008, Lindé took up a position as Section chief in the Division of International Finance at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In 2014, Lindé returned to the Riksbank as Head of Research. During the academic year 2016-2017, he served as resident scholar at the IMF. His main research interests are empirical and monetary macroeconomics, and he has recently published papers on the effects of fiscal policy in liquidity traps and currency unions in leading academic outlets like the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the European Economic Review, and the NBER Macroeconomics Annual. Lindé is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).

Jonathan Ostry

International Monetary Fund

Jonathan D. Ostry is Deputy Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund. His recent responsibilities include leading staff teams on: IMF-FSB Early Warning Exercises on global systemic macrofinancial risks; vulnerabilities exercises for advanced and emerging market countries; multilateral exchange rate surveillance, including the work of CGER, the Fund’s Consultative Group of Exchange Rates, and EBA, the External Balance Assessment; international financial architecture and reform of the IMF’s lending toolkit; capital account management (capital controls and prudential tools to manage capital inflows) and financial globalization issues; fiscal sustainability issues; and the nexus between income inequality and economic growth. Past positions include leading the division that produces the IMF’s flagship multilateral surveillance publication, the World Economic Outlook, and leading country teams on Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore. Mr. Ostry is the author/editor of a number of books on international macro policy issues, including, Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (MIT Press, 2017), and numerous articles in scholarly journals. His work has been widely cited in print and electronic media, including the BBC, the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Business Week, and National Public Radio. His work on inequality and unsustainable growth has also been cited in remarks made by President Barack Obama. He earned his B.A. (with distinction) from Queen's University (Canada) at age 18, and went on to earn a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University (Balliol College), and graduate degrees from the London School of Economics (M.Sc., 1984) and the University Chicago (Ph.D., 1988). He is listed in Who's Who in Economics (2003).

Koba Gvenetadze

National Bank of Georgia

Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Georgia, Governor 2000 - American University, Washington DC, USA. US Government Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Scholarship Program. Master degree in economics. 1994 - Tbilisi State University.. Scientific Degree: Master of Arts in Economics.March, 2016 - Present: Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Georgia, Governor.

Kristin Forbes

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kristin Forbes is the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Global Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She has regularly rotated between academia and senior policy positions. From 2014-2017 she was an External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee for the Bank of England. From 2003 to 2005 Forbes served as a Member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and from 2001-2002 she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department. Forbes’ academic research addresses policy-related questions in international macroeconomics, with recent work including topics such as: exchange rate pass-through, capital flows, macroprudential regulation, financial crises, contagion, current account imbalances, capital controls, and inflation dynamics. She was honored as one of the top 25 economists under the age of 45 who are “shaping how we think about the global economy” and previously named a "Young Global Leader" as part of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Forbes is currently a research associate at the NBER and CEPR, and a member of the Bellagio Group and Council on Foreign Relations. She has won numerous teaching awards and teaches one of the most popular classes at MIT's Sloan School. Before joining MIT, Forbes worked at the World Bank and Morgan Stanley. She received her PhD in Economics from MIT and graduated summa cum laude with highest honors from Williams College.

Lars Svensson

Stockholm School of Economics

Professor Lars E.O. Svensson is Affiliated Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics since May 2013. During September-November 2016 he was a Duisenberg Fellow at the Directorate General Research, European Central Bank, Frankfurt. During January 2015 - March 2016 he was Resident Scholar at the Research Department, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. He was Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden) during May 2007- May 2013, Professor of Economics at Princeton University during 2001-2009, and Professor of International Economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES), Stockholm University during 1984-2003. He is Affiliated Professor at IIES since June 2009. He has published extensively in scholarly journals on monetary economics and monetary policy, exchange-rate theory and policy, and general international macroeconomics. He has held visiting positions and lectured at universities, central banks, and international organizations in several countries. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Stockholm University.

He received the Great Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2012. He is a foreign honorary member of the American Economic Association, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a member of Academia Europaea, a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary member of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, a fellow of the Econometric Society, a fellow of the European Economic Association, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London. He was chair of the Prize Committee for the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences during 1999-2001, member during 1993-2002, and secretary during 1988-1992.

He was active as advisor to Sveriges Riksbank during 1990-2007 and was a member of the Monetary Policy Advisory Board and the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during from 2004 until his appointment in 2007 as Deputy Governor of the Riksbank. He has regularly consulted for international, U.S., and Swedish agencies and organizations. In 2000-2001 he undertook a review of monetary policy in New Zealand, commissioned by the New Zealand government, and in 2002 he chaired a committee reviewing monetary policy in Norway.

Michael Weber

University of Chicago

Michael Weber is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Cohen Keenoy Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Monetary Economics and Asset Pricing groups, a member of the Macro Finance Society, a research affiliate at the CESifo Research Network and a visiting researcher at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His research was awarded the 2017 Chakoozian Endowed Risk Management Prize, 2016 ECB Lamfalussy Research Fellowship, 2016 Center for Financial Research Best Paper Award, the Top Finance Graduate Award 2014, the WFA Cubist Systematic Strategies PhD Award for Outstanding Research, the UBS Best Conference Paper Prize at the EFA Annual Meeting 2014, the 2014 EFA Best Doctoral Student Conference Paper Prize, the Best Finance PhD Award in Honor of Prof. Greenbaum 2013 (Finalist), the Best PhD Student Paper Award, FMA European Conference 2014 and the 2013 AQR Insight Award. Weber earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. both in Finance from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a Diplom in Business Economics (with distinction) from the University of Mannheim which earned him the SEW Eurodrive dissertation award. His research interests include asset pricing, macroeconomics, international finance, and household finance. He has published in leading economics and finance journals such as the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics.

Mojmír Hampl

Czech National Bank

Mojmír Hampl, Vice Governor of the Czech National Bank (CNB) appointed for the second six-year term in 2012. Vice Governor of the CNB since 2008 and a member of the CNB´s Board since 2006, he served as Chief Executive Director of the Czech Consolidation Agency, a state-run bad bank. In 2002-2004, he worked as an economist at Česká Spořitelna – Erste Group and also an external adviser to the Minister of Finance of the Czech Republic in an expert group preparing a public finance reform proposal. Graduated from the University of Economics, Prague in 1998. He defended his doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Economics and Public Administration at the University of Economics in 2004. In 2000-2001 studied economics at postgraduate level at the University of Surrey in the UK. Mr Hampl has represented the CNB since 2008 in the EU Economic and Financial Committee and since 2011 in the Financial Stability Board’s Regional Consultative Group for Europe, where he has held the post of Co-Chair for the non-FSB member countries since 2017. Mojmír Hampl is a Czech national.

Olivier Coibion

University of Texas at Austin

Olivier Coibion is an Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin. He received a BA in Economics and Political Economy from the University of California at Berkeley (1999) and a PhD from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2007). He works on macroeconomic topics, including monetary policy, how agents for their expectations, inflation measurement, and commodity prices. Prior to joining UT Austin, Olivier worked at the International Monetary Fund, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the Brookings Institution. He is also affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Paweł Kopiec

Narodowy Bank Polski

Pawel Kopiec is a senior economist at Narodowy Bank Polski. He holds a PhD degree from the European University Insitute in Florence. His research interests include: inequality, models with heterogeneous agents, fiscal policy and models with financial frictions.

Paweł Samecki

Narodowy Bank Polski

Born in Łódź, Poland (1958). Between 1981 and 1991 worked at the University of Łódź (assistant, assistant professor). Ph. D. in economics (1988). Between 1991 and 2001 held senior positions in public administration, among others as deputy minister of finance (1997-1998) and undersecretary of state at the Office for European Integration (1998-2002). European Commissioner for regional policy (2009-2010). Member of the Management Board of Poland’s central bank (Narodowy Bank Polski; 2004-2009 and again since 2014).

Stefano Gnocchi

Bank of Canada

Stefano Gnocchi is the Senior Research Director in the Canadian Economic Analysis (CEA) Department. His research interests include macroeconomics, monetary economics, and monetary and fiscal policy. Prior to joining the Bank, Stefano held academic positions at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Yakiv Smolii

National Bank of Ukraine

Yakiv Smolii – Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) since 15 March 2018. Acting Governor of the NBU since 11 May 2017. First Deputy Governor of the NBU since October 2016. Before, he worked as NBU Deputy Governor. Member of the NBU Board since April 2014. Yakiv Smolii has been working in the banking system of Ukraine for more than 25 years, since its establishment after Ukraine’s got independence. In 1991-1994 he worked at the NBU Regional Office in Ternopil oblast. In 1994- 2005, he served as deputy chairman of the board at JS Postal Pension Bank Aval. In 2005-2014, held the office of Banking Business Director at Prestige-Group. Holds a PhD in Economics.

Yuriy Gorodnichenko

University of California, Berkeley

Yuriy Gorodnichenko, a native of Ukraine, is a professor at the Department of Economics, University of California – Berkeley. He received his B.A. and MA at EERC/Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine) and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. A significant part of his research has been about monetary policy (effects, optimal design, inflation targeting), fiscal policy (countercyclical policy, government spending multipliers), taxation (tax evasion, inequality), economic growth (long-run determinants, globalization, innovation, financial frictions), and business cycles. Yuriy serves on many editorial boards, including Journal of Monetary Economics and VoxUkraine. Yuriy is a prolific researcher. His work was published in leading economics journals (e.g., American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies) and was cited in policy discussions and media. Yuriy has received numerous awards for his research.

Oleksiy Kryvtsov

Bank of Canada

Oleksiy Kryvtsov is the Senior Research Director in the International Economic Analysis Department. His research interests center on business cycle fluctuations, with a special focus on monetary theory and policy. Oleksiy contributed to topics including consumer price behaviour, real effects of monetary policy shocks, dynamics of markups and costs over the business cycle. Oleksiy received his PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2004.

Olena Ogrokhina

Lafayette College

Olena Ogrokhina is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Lafayette College. She was also a visiting scholar at Lehigh University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She received her MA at EERC/KSE/Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine) and her Ph.D. at the University of Houston. Her main research interests are in the area of international finance, applied econometrics, and monetary policy. Her work was published in the Journal of International Economics and Finance, and Economic Modelling. Her current work focuses on the effect of inflation targeting in debt denomination in developing countries.

Artem Vdovychenko

National Bank of Ukraine

Artem Vdovychenko has held the position of senior economist of the Research Division at the National Bank of Ukraine since March 2017. He received his PhD in Economics at the National University of State Tax Service of Ukraine in 2010. In 2006, he obtained a Master’s degree in Finance at the same university.

Vdovychenko’s research interests include empirical macroeconomics, non-linear time series models, fiscal policy sustainability and its influence on the economy. His recent works, which are devoted to the sustainability of Ukrainian fiscal policy and tax reform, have been published in specialized academic journals, such as Post-Communist Economies, Visnyk of the National Bank of Ukraine and others.

Maksym Ivanyna

Joint Vienna Institute

Maksym Ivanyna is a Senior Economist at the Joint Vienna Institute, which he joined in 2011. He holds Doctor’s degrees in Economics from Regensburg University (Germany) and Michigan State University (USA). Apart from teaching at the JVI and other training centers, Maksym did a number of consultancy jobs at the IMF, World Bank, European Commission, German Institute for Development, and Centre for EU Enlargement. His research portfolio includes publications and working papers in the fields of fiscal policy, development, growth, corruption, governance, fiscal federalism, taxation, technology adoption and innovation, structural reform, income inequality.

Dmytro Sologub

National Bank of Ukraine

Deputy Governor of the NBU since March 2015. Dmytro Sologub is responsible for monetary policy, macroprudential policy to ensure financial stability, economic analysis, collection and analysis of statistics and reporting, and central bank research. In 2002, he started his career as a research associate at the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER). From 2004, he worked as a research economist at the IMF Resident Representative Office in Ukraine. From 2007 to 2015, prior to joining the NBU, he was head of analysis and research at Raiffeisen Bank Aval PJSC.

Mr. Sologub graduated from the Belarus National University with a major in Economic Theory. Later, he obtained a Master’s Degree in Economics (EERC) at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He is a CFA Charterholder. Deputy Governor of the NBU since March 2015.

With the support of:

Government of Canada

Kyiv School of Economics

Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, Canada has been at the forefront of the international community’s support to the Ukrainian people – especially in their government’s ongoing and important reform efforts.

Since January 2014, Canada has also announced more than $700 million in much-needed assistance to Ukraine, including $400 million in low interest loans to help Ukraine stabilize its economy and over $240 million in bilateral development assistance focusing on democracy, the rule of law, and sustainable economic growth.

Founded in 1996, the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) is a world-class, well-respected educational institution, both in Ukraine and abroad. The KSE is ranked among the top schools in Central and Eastern Europe. This educational institution trains the future generation of world-class economists, thus contributing to the development of economics, business, as well as economic policy in Ukraine and neighboring countries.